It’s not every day that a Bollywood film disrupts weddings in Mumbai, but when it comes to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, nothing seems impossible. The ace filmmaker, renowned for his grand period dramas, opulent musical productions, and larger-than-life sets, once organised a project so massive that it allegedly caused a citywide shortage of power generators. As a result, several weddings had to be postponed or even cancelled altogether. The film behind this unusual chaos was the iconic Shah Rukh Khan-starrer, Devdas.
How SLB’s Devdas led to power generator shortage across Mumbai
In a recent chat with Friday Talkies, Devdas cinematographer, Binod Pradhan spilt the tea on just how massive the production was. The 2002 film, adapted from Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s 1917 novel, starred Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Madhuri Dixit. It was a grand spectacle with opulent sets, breathtaking costumes and lighting. Pradhan revealed how the perfectionist in Bhansali led him to only craft three to four shots per day. He shared:
“Honestly, I didn’t realise the sets were going to be so big. In fact, we weren’t in a hurry to shoot either. That is, in other films, we used to can 15-20 shots a day, sometimes even 40, and here in Devdas, we were only doing 3-4.”